Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Printed Matter will reportedly close in August and continue to operate out of a pop-up shop down the street, until their new location, at 231 Eleventh Avenue is ready to open in the fall. Located at the corner of 26th Street, the new space will double the square footage of their current Chelsea location.

An embossed card with letterpress text, and collaged elements of the artists' make up, tobacco and ash, hair, coat and shirt and breakfast. The booklet also includes five small black & white photographs of the artists' performances and two paragraphs of text:

"Gilbert and George, the sculptors, are walking along a new road. They left their little studio with all the tools and brushes, taking with them only some music, gentle smiles on their faces and the most serious intentions in the world."

In 2010, a copy sold at a Christies auction for £2,500 ($3,848 US), more than twice the high estimate. The title is currently available from Sims Reed for £5,000 ($7,600 US), here.

The work is currently on display at the MoMA in NYC, as part of Gilbert & George: The Early Years, curated by David Platzker. The exhibition runs until September 27, 2015.

"Their whole way of life became a work of art. Every gesture, every piece of writing was intended to elucidate their "living sculpture. Their books/publications A Message From The Sculptors Gilbert & George, To Be With Art Is All We Ask and The Pencil on Paper Descriptive Works are nothing but descriptive appendices of their intentions."

Monday, June 29, 2015

Written Works: Modernist Thought and Human Experience, organized by Ana Maria Sapountzis, closes at the MoMA library today. The small exhibition, contained in four vitrines, features books by artists which consist primarily of text, such as memoirs, diaries, letters, and essays. Artists featured include John Cage, Tracey Emin, Paul Gauguin, Yayoi Kusama, Andy Warhol and others.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

On May 5th, 2013, as part of MoMA PS1’s Sunday Sessions, The National performed their three and a half minute song Sorrow for six continuous hours, at the request of Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson. The 9 LP box set on clear vinyl is released today in the UK and mid-July in North America.

Monday, June 22, 2015

A couple of years ago the band Here We Go Magic announced over Twitter: “Just picked up John Waters hitchhiking in the middle of Ohio. No joke. Waters is in the car.” The story was picked up by numerous media outlets and quickly went viral, outing the filmmaker/artist's plans.

The guitarist Michael Bloch later told Pitchfork:

There's a hydro-fracking boom in western Pennsylvania. You can't get a motel room. We had to drive til 4AM, and finally found a Days Inn in eastern Ohio. Getting back on the highway this morning, there was a man at the side of the on-ramp with a sign that read "to the end of Rte 70." Jen [Turner, bassist] wanted to pick him up, but we drove past him. As we passed by, our sound guy said "John Waters." Luke said, "Yep, definitely John Waters." We got off at the next exit and circled back. He was still there. We pulled up, opened the door and asked where he was coming from. "Baltimore," he said. And we said "Get in, sir."

Most drivers who stopped to pick him up did not recognize him, or mistook him for Steve Buscemi. Some offered him money, assuming he was homeless (which he attributes to his running out of moisturizer). But Waters packed plenty of cash and credit cards, a GPS tracking device, a sign that read "I'm not Psycho", and a “fame kit,” in case he needs to use his celebrity to get him out of a trouble. Miscalculating the length of time it would take, he packed too few pairs of underwear, as the plan was to throw them away after wearing them, rather than stop for laundry.

Before setting out on his Baltimore-to-San Francisco adventure, Waters imagined the best and worst case scenarios, which make up the first two sections of the book. The final recounts his trip, which was not as dangerous as cross-country hitch-hiking might sound.

“I think it’s dangerous to stay home,” he said, “never going out and seeing the world and meeting new and interesting people. Now that’s dangerous.”

Waters, in Toronto this week for Pride events, will speak to a sold-out audience tonight at Ryerson Theatre.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

Saturday, June 20, 2015

Minter met Richard Prince via twitter, when he began re-tweeting her posts a few years ago. They later met in person at a party and he introduced her to Fabiola Alondra, the director of his publishing venture, Fulton Ryder. Alondra proposed a book and Minter was working on a series of "bush pictures" for a magazine project that fell through:

"The idea was to create beautiful images of pubic hair, a subject matter that seems to be disappearing from popular discourse. We asked model’s of all races, all colours to grow out their pubic hair and I got inspired to make photos and paintings from some of those images, and I’m still shooting them."

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Visit the Art Metropole booth at Art Basel 2015, from June 18th to 21st. They will be launching two new artists’ editions: Sara Cwynar’s cotton tote bag and Francisco López’s 1980-82 audio cassette.
A large selection of artists' books, multiples and editions will also be on display and available for sale.

The booth is located at Hall 1, Magazines Sector, Booth Z25, next to Conversations.

Art Metropole also officially announced the departure of Corinn Gerber as director, yesterday. Read the full post here.

In 1993, the compilers of A Chance Operation: The John Cage Tribute CD were faced with the dilemma of how to use a recording to honour a composer who preferred random sounds and the living room window left open, to pre-recorded music? Their solution was to divide 23 pieces of music (by Laurie Anderson, Earle Brown, John Cale, Kronos Quartet, Meredith Monk, Yoko Ono, James Tenney, David Tudor, etc.) into 99 tracks and suggest that the listener use the (then-somewhat-new) 'random' feature on their CD players. In all likelihood (especially given the limited audience for such a project) no listener would ever hear the same sequence as another.

The producers of No Patent Pending felt a similar discomfort: "How to convey ephemeral, performative practices based around unique and inventive media within the fixed and standardized format of a book?" Their solution is not dissimilar.

The title is edited by Matteo Marangoni, with contributions from Ewen Chardronnet, Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand, Lars Kynde, Alessandro Ludovico, Jonathan Reus, Joel Ryan & Kristina Andersen, Dieter Vandoren, Anne Wellmer, Godfried-Willem Raes and Yolanda Uriz. It features a collection of theoretical essays, conceptual and poetic exercises, and illustrations. It is presented as a series of cards contained in a cardboard slipcase. Each copy was manually assembled following a procedural score composed by Lars Kynde (see below).

Dedicated to Artists’ books, multiples, recordings, postcards, magazines and ephemera, this site will feature reviews of recent titles, features on artists and publishers, random listings of older works, the occasional longer essay or interview, straight-forward pictorials,links to recent news, etc. etc., in an attempt to create an aggregate of information on editioned artworks.

About Me

Dave Dyment is an artist, writer and curator based in Toronto, Canada. He is the co-editor of "One for Me and One to Share: Artists Multiples and Editions" (YYZ Books, 2012). His own work can be viewed at www.dave-dyment.com. He is represented by MKG127.